Very clear and concise article! Thank you for posting this. I'd like to emphasise on this: Exercise works not because it “burns calories,” but because it restores communication between systems that evolved to function together.
Unfortunately, there is still the belief that exercise is just to burn the 350 calorie donut you just ate; reality is more nuanced, human metabolism is complex and different for each person; and burning calories it's not just the only thing exercise does. Again, I recommend people take some time to read this. Strength training is necessary for our brain!
When muscle contracts, it doesn’t just burn fuel. It broadcasts information. Myokines, metabolites, afferent nerve signals, and mechanical inputs all tell the brain, “The organism is active. It’s safe to invest in repair, cognition, mood, and resilience.” Without that signal, the brain down-regulates. Metabolism slows. Inflammation rises. Mood and clarity suffer — even if calories are perfectly controlled.
And you’re absolutely right: metabolism is individual, adaptive, and context-dependent. Two people can “burn” the same number of calories and experience completely different outcomes at the level of insulin sensitivity, neurotransmitters, stress hormones, and brain plasticity.
That’s why strength training is so powerful. It preserves the muscle-brain conversation that aging tries to silence. It maintains cognitive sharpness, emotional regulation, and metabolic flexibility — not because of calories, but because of communication.
Really appreciate the whole myokines angle here, kinda shifts how you think bout strength work. The "muscles going silent" metaphor is powerful stuff, cuz it frames sarcopenia not just as weakness but as literal loss of biochemical comunication. Though i wonder if theres a minimum threshold effect or if even minimal load triggers sum signaling? Been noticing better mental clarity on lifting days myself, now this makes more sense why.
There does appear to be a threshold effect, but it’s lower than most people think. Even low-load, low-volume muscle contraction can trigger meaningful myokine release and brain signaling. You don’t need maximal lifts to turn the conversation back on—what matters is muscle activation with intent, not just movement without load.
That said, the signal scales with demand. As intensity, recruitment, and metabolic stress increase, the diversity and magnitude of myokines (like BDNF-linked pathways, irisin, IL-6 in its anti-inflammatory role) increase as well. Think of it less like an on/off switch and more like a dimmer.
This is a great framing: strength training isn’t just “muscle work”, it’s nervous-system training. In clinic we often talk about brain health as if it lives only in the skull, but skeletal muscle is one of the brain’s most reliable upstream regulators via myokines, vascular signaling, immune calibration, and metabolic stability. What I especially appreciate here is the “exercise = messaging” idea. Resistance training gives the brain repeated evidence that the body is capable and that shows up as better glucose handling (neuronal fuel stability), endothelial function (perfusion), lower inflammatory tone, and more neurotrophic support. For many patients, mood, sleep depth, balance, and “brain fog” improve not from a supplement stack, but from restoring this body–brain feedback loop. Practical add-on for our-longevity-focused readers: you don’t need to go hard, but you need to go progressive + consistent: 2–3 days/week of strength (leave a couple reps in reserve), plus walking/zone 2, and enough protein/sleep to actually adapt. The goal isn’t soreness; it’s preserving the signal across decades!
That’s the part that often gets missed: resistance training isn’t just producing chemicals, it’s updating the brain’s model of the body. Each bout says, this system can generate force, tolerate load, recover, and adapt. The nervous system treats that as a safety and capacity signal, which then ripples outward into autonomic tone, vascular regulation, immune restraint, and metabolic stability.
The point about patients improving without adding another supplement is clinically spot-on. When the body–brain feedback loop is restored, a lot of downstream systems recalibrate on their own—sleep deepens, mood steadies, balance improves, cognitive “noise” quiets. Not because we forced those outcomes, but because the brain is finally getting coherent input again.
And your longevity note is exactly right: progressive + consistent beats heroic + sporadic every time. Leaving reps in reserve, pairing strength with low-intensity aerobic work, and supporting adaptation with protein and sleep keeps the signal alive without pushing the system into threat.
I’m wondering how this factors into chronic illnesses like POTS, MCAS & long Covid which all have significant brain fog, autonomic disregulation, dizziness, inflammation etc. Yet it’s hard to exercise with these illnesses “Balance problems, dizziness, and cognitive fog often improve not because the brain was “trained,” but because the body restored the flow environment the brain depends on.”
As far as exercise goes, with conditions like POTS, MCAS and long COVID we start first brain based exercises to induce neuroplasticity within specific networks of the brain to create autonomic regulation and stability. Once we have achieved a level of stability that allows our patients to begin full body exercises we start ALL exercises supine or prone enabling the heart and brain to be on the same plane of gravity, we eventually will work up to slowly static inclines while exercises while also progressing to stationary bike at slow speeds and progress form there. Hope that helps.
Thanks! I do a lot of bilateral drawing exercises with clients & community members with these illnesses (including myself). It seems to be a good place to start even when we’re super sensitive. Would love to see more of this research focused on these diseases.
every patient is different but in general we do a lot of trigeminal nerve stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation, transcranial neuromodulation, tilt table therapies, isometric exercises of the body, light vestibular exercises focusing both on the canals and otoliths, photobiomodulation of the body and head, ice caps to promote mamallian diving reflex, memory and cognitive exercises, complex movements are limbs, neuromuscular electrical stimulation, as well as other therapies we can do while patients are in an autonomic stable position if possible.
Very clear and concise article! Thank you for posting this. I'd like to emphasise on this: Exercise works not because it “burns calories,” but because it restores communication between systems that evolved to function together.
Unfortunately, there is still the belief that exercise is just to burn the 350 calorie donut you just ate; reality is more nuanced, human metabolism is complex and different for each person; and burning calories it's not just the only thing exercise does. Again, I recommend people take some time to read this. Strength training is necessary for our brain!
When muscle contracts, it doesn’t just burn fuel. It broadcasts information. Myokines, metabolites, afferent nerve signals, and mechanical inputs all tell the brain, “The organism is active. It’s safe to invest in repair, cognition, mood, and resilience.” Without that signal, the brain down-regulates. Metabolism slows. Inflammation rises. Mood and clarity suffer — even if calories are perfectly controlled.
And you’re absolutely right: metabolism is individual, adaptive, and context-dependent. Two people can “burn” the same number of calories and experience completely different outcomes at the level of insulin sensitivity, neurotransmitters, stress hormones, and brain plasticity.
That’s why strength training is so powerful. It preserves the muscle-brain conversation that aging tries to silence. It maintains cognitive sharpness, emotional regulation, and metabolic flexibility — not because of calories, but because of communication.
Really appreciate the whole myokines angle here, kinda shifts how you think bout strength work. The "muscles going silent" metaphor is powerful stuff, cuz it frames sarcopenia not just as weakness but as literal loss of biochemical comunication. Though i wonder if theres a minimum threshold effect or if even minimal load triggers sum signaling? Been noticing better mental clarity on lifting days myself, now this makes more sense why.
There does appear to be a threshold effect, but it’s lower than most people think. Even low-load, low-volume muscle contraction can trigger meaningful myokine release and brain signaling. You don’t need maximal lifts to turn the conversation back on—what matters is muscle activation with intent, not just movement without load.
That said, the signal scales with demand. As intensity, recruitment, and metabolic stress increase, the diversity and magnitude of myokines (like BDNF-linked pathways, irisin, IL-6 in its anti-inflammatory role) increase as well. Think of it less like an on/off switch and more like a dimmer.
This is a great framing: strength training isn’t just “muscle work”, it’s nervous-system training. In clinic we often talk about brain health as if it lives only in the skull, but skeletal muscle is one of the brain’s most reliable upstream regulators via myokines, vascular signaling, immune calibration, and metabolic stability. What I especially appreciate here is the “exercise = messaging” idea. Resistance training gives the brain repeated evidence that the body is capable and that shows up as better glucose handling (neuronal fuel stability), endothelial function (perfusion), lower inflammatory tone, and more neurotrophic support. For many patients, mood, sleep depth, balance, and “brain fog” improve not from a supplement stack, but from restoring this body–brain feedback loop. Practical add-on for our-longevity-focused readers: you don’t need to go hard, but you need to go progressive + consistent: 2–3 days/week of strength (leave a couple reps in reserve), plus walking/zone 2, and enough protein/sleep to actually adapt. The goal isn’t soreness; it’s preserving the signal across decades!
That’s the part that often gets missed: resistance training isn’t just producing chemicals, it’s updating the brain’s model of the body. Each bout says, this system can generate force, tolerate load, recover, and adapt. The nervous system treats that as a safety and capacity signal, which then ripples outward into autonomic tone, vascular regulation, immune restraint, and metabolic stability.
The point about patients improving without adding another supplement is clinically spot-on. When the body–brain feedback loop is restored, a lot of downstream systems recalibrate on their own—sleep deepens, mood steadies, balance improves, cognitive “noise” quiets. Not because we forced those outcomes, but because the brain is finally getting coherent input again.
And your longevity note is exactly right: progressive + consistent beats heroic + sporadic every time. Leaving reps in reserve, pairing strength with low-intensity aerobic work, and supporting adaptation with protein and sleep keeps the signal alive without pushing the system into threat.
I’m wondering how this factors into chronic illnesses like POTS, MCAS & long Covid which all have significant brain fog, autonomic disregulation, dizziness, inflammation etc. Yet it’s hard to exercise with these illnesses “Balance problems, dizziness, and cognitive fog often improve not because the brain was “trained,” but because the body restored the flow environment the brain depends on.”
As far as exercise goes, with conditions like POTS, MCAS and long COVID we start first brain based exercises to induce neuroplasticity within specific networks of the brain to create autonomic regulation and stability. Once we have achieved a level of stability that allows our patients to begin full body exercises we start ALL exercises supine or prone enabling the heart and brain to be on the same plane of gravity, we eventually will work up to slowly static inclines while exercises while also progressing to stationary bike at slow speeds and progress form there. Hope that helps.
Thanks! I do a lot of bilateral drawing exercises with clients & community members with these illnesses (including myself). It seems to be a good place to start even when we’re super sensitive. Would love to see more of this research focused on these diseases.
every patient is different but in general we do a lot of trigeminal nerve stimulation, vagus nerve stimulation, transcranial neuromodulation, tilt table therapies, isometric exercises of the body, light vestibular exercises focusing both on the canals and otoliths, photobiomodulation of the body and head, ice caps to promote mamallian diving reflex, memory and cognitive exercises, complex movements are limbs, neuromuscular electrical stimulation, as well as other therapies we can do while patients are in an autonomic stable position if possible.
https://drtraster.substack.com/p/clinical-protocol-for-dysautonomia